Though she had already noticed something amiss from the differing styles of their starry robes, Ye Bai was still stunned when she heard the words spoken aloud.
The emergency kill order issued by the Church of the Stars—their target was actually one of their own bishops.
Without a doubt, within any religious organization, the position of bishop held immense significance. And through the additional information conveyed by the other party’s psychic energy, Ye Bai instantly understood that within the Church of the Stars, this rank was the highest echelon.
As if anticipating Ye Bai’s shock, the man—Lelun, a bishop (or rather, former bishop) of the Church of the Stars—continued, "I committed an act that is absolutely forbidden by the Church."
Betrayal? Apostasy? Heresy?
Instinctively, Ye Bai’s mind raced through the gravest sins in religious doctrine. At the same time, she suddenly realized she still didn’t know which deity the Church of the Stars worshipped. She quickly deployed a gravitational trap in the void ahead and pressed,
"What does the Church of the Stars believe in? And what exactly did you do?"
Lelun tilted his spacecraft, effortlessly evading the trap, then turned his gaze to Ye Bai. "The Lord is omniscient and omnipresent. The Lord is the Stars, embodying all known and unknown truths of this world."
It sounded as though the Stars encompassed some cosmic concept of 'truth.' This church… was unexpectedly scientific?
As Ye Bai pondered this, Lelun transmitted another message: "As for me, I committed blasphemy. I crossed a boundary set by the Lord for all sentient life."
"What boundary?" Ye Bai’s expression stiffened, and she immediately pressed for an answer.
Given their earlier brief skirmish, Lelun seemed to respect Ye Bai’s abilities and appeared eager to recruit her. Thus, he answered without hesitation:
"The upper limit of psychic energy is A-rank. The upper limit of the soul is ten thousand years. These are the restrictions imposed by the Lord upon all intelligent life—just like the laws of nature, they are part of the fundamental rules of our universe."
Psychic energy had an upper limit? The pinnacle for all intelligent life was A-rank?
The revelation caught Ye Bai off guard, but she quickly seized on another detail: "What do you mean by 'soul limit'?"
Lelun had anticipated this question. "Though intelligent life is privileged—capable of comprehending and wielding fragments of truth, with infinite potential—one thing it can never attain is true 'immortality.'"
"The maximum cellular activity in a living body lasts a hundred years. Through prolonged stasis, biological modification, mechanization… and other means, one can acquire an ageless vessel. But the final constraint is the duration of the soul’s activity. Ten thousand years—that is the limit."
"That limit is the soul’s lifespan."
Here, Lelun’s use of 'soul' was translated into terms Ye Bai could grasp. More accurately, it referred to 'psychic energy, consciousness, thought—the subjective faculties of intelligent beings.'
Upon hearing Lelun mention the ten-thousand-year soul limit, Ye Bai’s first thought was of her own 'advanced age' of over ten thousand years.
But Lelun quickly clarified: "I was born a billion years ago. To avoid exceeding my soul’s limit, I’ve spent countless millennia in stasis."
So, during periods of unconscious stasis, the so-called soul limit didn’t apply.
At the same time, Ye Bai began to piece together the nature of Lelun’s transgression—
Sure enough, in the next moment, Lelun confirmed her suspicion: "I tampered with my soul limit in the eyes of the Lord."
As he spoke, a long-suppressed resentment and greed—buried beneath his meticulously controlled, almost robotic demeanor—finally surfaced, lending his face a flicker of humanity.
"I just wanted to live a little longer. What’s so wrong with that? The Lord doesn’t care."
"The ones who care are the others in the Church—those too afraid to do the same. They still have long stretches of their soul limits left, and now they’re only interested in seizing the vacant bishop’s seat!"
Pausing, as if realizing his outburst, Lelun composed himself and then asked Ye Bai, "You’re one of the two operatives from the last planetary migration mission, aren’t you?"
Ye Bai immediately connected the dots. "You’re the third operative?"
Earlier, upon arriving here, she had already speculated about the emergency mission, the unresolved previous mission, and the missing third operative. Now, everything fell into place.
Lelun admitted it. "This mission was also part of my plan to escape the Chaotic Star Sea. Based on my assessment, it was supposed to be a high-risk failure. As the mission’s adjudicator, I couldn’t leave the Chaotic Star Sea with the main terminal, so I forged a sub-account to slip away after the mission collapsed."
"To ensure failure, I accelerated the gamma-ray burst’s arrival by tenfold, drastically increasing the mission’s difficulty. Yet someone still accepted it—and you completed it. That’s why I was exposed prematurely."
At this, the image of the gamma-ray burst flashed before Ye Bai’s eyes, sending a chill down her spine.
"You can control gamma-ray bursts?"
Lelun replied, "It’s the will of the Lord. I merely adjusted the timing within permitted parameters—something any bishop can do."
For a moment, Ye Bai was at a loss for words. She had assumed the Church of the Stars merely predicted disasters and exerted influence. But if they could manipulate the very source of such catastrophes, then what happened to Taida Star wasn’t a rescue—it was outright civilizational interference.
It was like a gardener pruning a plant simply because its growth displeased them.
In that instant, Ye Bai even found herself drawing a parallel to Blue Star’s Ordovician gamma-ray burst—or the asteroid impact ten thousand years ago. Could those, too, have been the result of such meddling?
Their psychic exchange was incredibly efficient. Meanwhile, Lelun had been steadily veering away from the coordinates he’d earlier exposed. If he could break through before the Church of the Stars encircled him, his chances of escape would rise dramatically.
In space, forming an encirclement required far more resources than on a planet. It wasn’t a flat circle—it was a sphere.
As they neared the edge of the targeted zone, a hint of relief flickered across Lelun’s face. "I admire your skill and strength. So, how about a partnership?"
Ye Bai snapped back to attention and replied noncommittally, "What kind of partnership?"
Lelun laid out the options: "Two choices. First, you let me escape, and I’ll transfer advanced technology and a hundred million Star Points to you. Second, join me in fleeing the Chaotic Star Sea to the Stellar Alliance. If you’re from the Stellar Alliance, I can erase the influence of the Stars’ will on you."
Upon hearing the second option, Ye Bai initially felt puzzled—she had just arrived from the Stellar Alliance. But then she quickly caught onto a crucial detail: "What do you mean by 'influence of the Will of the Stars'?"
Lelun wasn’t surprised by Ye Bai’s question. In fact, at this stage, he was more than happy to share some information with her. Who knows? He might even escape this encirclement without having to give up anything.
"You really are from the Stellar Alliance, no wonder you lack so much common knowledge. Anyone who comes from the Stellar Alliance to the Chaotic Star Sea and then returns will be influenced by the Will of the Stars. They won’t be able to reveal anything related to the Church of the Stars to others, and they won’t even realize it themselves."
Hearing this, Ye Bai froze in shock once again.
Such an influence actually existed?!
She had previously speculated that the balance between the Stellar Alliance and the Chaotic Star Sea was the result of either rivalry or unspoken agreement. But now it seemed her assumption was wrong—it was the 'Will of the Stars' that ensured no one who came from the Stellar Alliance, whether intentionally or accidentally, could disclose any related information.
Ye Bai hadn’t returned to the Stellar Alliance since arriving here, so she didn’t know whether she would be affected by that influence when she went back.
Could it be that the 'Stars' worshipped by this church—which sounded like a cosmic concept representing 'universal truth'—were actually some kind of real, sentient will?
Once again, a piece of information she had obtained from the data stream during her last experiment flashed through her mind—
Beware the Stars.
For a moment, Ye Bai hesitated. Her original plan had just been to pry information from Lelun, but now she was considering whether to take this opportunity to return to the Stellar Alliance with him.
However, the Stellar Alliance held many threats for Ye Bai—there was a risk of exposure. Moreover, she couldn’t trust Lelun, a seemingly young but actually billion-year-old Star Bishop whose sole obsession was extending his lifespan.
Right now, Lelun was the Church of the Stars' most wanted fugitive. Ye Bai had no idea how much effort the church would put into hunting him down, but judging by the current scale of the operation, it was no small matter.
When it came to understanding the Church of the Stars, Ye Bai and Lelun, as a bishop, had a severe information gap. There was no telling when he might set her up as a decoy to divert pursuit.
Seeing Ye Bai hesitate once more, the shrewd old man quickly grasped the situation. "Trouble with your identity in the Stellar Alliance? Or are you worried about being dragged down by me?"
Ye Bai answered bluntly, "Both."
With their escape almost within reach, Lelun was in an accommodating mood. "No problem. You can choose the first option. As a show of goodwill, I’ll leave this master terminal here. I’ve already unlocked its permissions—once your secondary terminal gets close enough, you can access the technology and credits stored inside."
At the same time, a terminal identical in size to Ye Bai’s, but pure black in color, flew out of the spacecraft and hovered in the void.
Ye Bai didn’t recklessly probe the terminal with her psychic senses. Instead, she immediately connected with her own device.
Her previously restricted terminal reactivated, as if reconnecting to a network, and a familiar interface—identical to the one she’d seen during the wormhole mission reward selection—appeared before her.
With a single thought, a flood of new technologies and credits, just like the rewards she’d chosen last time, were added to her terminal.
It looked like some kind of localized download hotspot…
Ye Bai couldn’t help but complain internally. She now understood why every mission required the presence of someone from the Church of the Stars—not just to assert the church’s control, but also to distribute rewards. Though this method seemed more like granting specific permissions.
"I don’t need this terminal anymore anyway. The Church of the Stars is after it—if you want it, it’s yours."
Lelun spoke generously, as if hoping the terminal would buy him time.
Ye Bai stared at the black bishop’s terminal, her eyes gleaming.
She was burning with curiosity about the secrets it might hold. But if she intended to stay in the Chaotic Star Sea, she absolutely couldn’t keep it with her. However, there was another way she could retain it—
Because all she needed was to have 'once' possessed it.
